Energy companies pressure landowners into fracking, study shows

Energy companies use persistent and personalized pressure to get landowners to give permission for hydraulic fracturing (fracking), and even when landowners decline, companies use legalized compulsion to conduct fracking anyway, according to a new study led by researchers at UNLV and Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Geoscience technology company founded by MIT/WHOI Joint Program student awarded $3.8M from U.S. Department of Energy

Eden, a geoscience technology development company co-founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program student Paris Smalls, will receive $3.8 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Solved: The mystery of toxic fracking byproducts

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” relies on water, sand and other chemicals to clear the way for engineers to remove oil or gas from shale — porous rocks below the ground.Engineers know what they are pumping into the ground, but they haven’t understood why they have found certain highly dangerous compounds in flowback — the mixture of water, salt and other chemicals that flows back to the surface after being pumped through the shale.